I added this to bug tracker as a suggestion but thought to run by this forum since not all visit bug tracker.
The idea started with my not being happy getting emails from a dozen of different forums at Moodle.org, all with "using moodle" as subject prefix. However, the same applies to my Moodle, where I am in a multitude of forums, and to students in our courses, many of which take 4-6 courses in parallel, each with multiple forums.
The point is that different people use different mail clients and have different preferences and habits for processing mails. Some use threading, others use filters, others use content concatenator or else. Some use pop and some imap. Some see content with email list, others see only list and must open an email to see content.
So, I think it would be nice to empower users to give them a choice of the subject format just as we have now a choice for mail format (plain or html).
* course name only
* forum name only
* course name:forum name
* custom prefix (unique site-wide, set by admin or teacher)
option: enclose prefix in square brackets (affects sorting in some programs)
I have hacked my Moodle to use '[course name:forum name]' for all forums and this is working great despite the fact that subjects are longer than before and some email clients truncate them. At least, anyone can see where a given email is coming from without having to open it.
Robert, what file do you hacked your moodle so that it will show the forum name on the email?
file: /moodle/mod/forum/lib.php
function: forum_cron
changed
$postsubject = "$course->shortname: ".format_string($post->subject,true);
to
$postsubject = "[$course->shortname:$forum->name] ".format_string($post->subject,true);
$postsubject = strip_tags($postsubject); // added to get rid of lang tags
function: forum_cron
changed
$postsubject = "$course->shortname: ".format_string($post->subject,true);
to
$postsubject = "[$course->shortname:$forum->name] ".format_string($post->subject,true);
$postsubject = strip_tags($postsubject); // added to get rid of lang tags